If the supercommittee does not finish on time, it would lose special procedural powers to push a tax-and-spending plan through a bitterly divided House and Senate, leaving congressional leaders without an easy path to compromise on the expiring provisions — and a potentially nasty holiday-season fight on their hands.

“We don’t have the answers,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, conceded recently as it became evident that the panel’s effort had stalled. “The supercommittee was put in place” to develop “a strategy to take us through the election” by resolving the toughest outstanding budget problems, he said. “If they don’t succeed, then we have to address these issues.”

Sen. Jon Kyl, a member of the congressional committee created to craft a bipartisan deficit reduction deal, said Saturday the group will work until Monday's deadline, but it's "pretty doubtful" the bipartisan panel will forge a last-minute compromise.

"It would be better if we could reach an agreement on how to do it, but if we don't, there's the sequester that automatically occurs. So we're going to be reducing spending by $1.2 trillion no matter what," Kyl said.

The job of Congress was no longer the work of the nation. The job of Congress was to help its majority "to stay in power."

This is the legacy of Speaker Gingrich. It has been followed by Republicans and Democrats alike. It is a legacy that has done the nation great harm. And much more important than the question of how Gingrich might have profited personally from the economy of influence that he helped build is the question of whether, and how, he now intends to "change" it.

Cain lists several points on why he thinks he will win the nomination, including that “as a descendent of slaves I can lead the Republican party to victory by garnering a large share of the black vote, something that has not been done since Dwight Eisenhower garnered 41 percent of the black vote in 1956.”

In an interview with The Sunday Times in the United Kingdom, al-Assad said that Syria "will not bow down" despite international threats of economic sanctions over the government's crackdown on protesters.

He said recent attacks on the Syrian army showed he was facing armed fighters, not peaceful demonstrators.

"The conflict will continue, and the pressure to subjugate Syria will continue," he told the newspaper. "Syria will not bow down."

Thanks for reading!

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soundoff(2 Responses)

diridi

candy, please ask these GOP contenders, if they repeal health care reform, how they replace, do they sell again to insurance idiots, how about preexisting conditioned pts, lack of insurance....etc, people are not for repeal of this much needed legislation....tell...ask...already BCBS hiring foreigners ignoring citizens....Raleigh area lot of Medicare fraud...ask..how they put up...